This set starts out with the amusing complaint of Lewis about dating letters; "a date is a meaningless thing." A bit silly, really.
Before commenting on his reading, two things keep standing out: 1) his priggishness, which he later admits, and 2) his enjoyment of the grammaphone. He's constantly writing about the records he and Arthur are listening to.
Through these letters, Lewis keeps looking forward to getting "Letters from Hell" (Thisted, transl. by Sutter); when he finally gets it, he didn't like it and put it away in a drawer. Seems that it was something Arthur liked. Hooper's footnote, p. 215, asks the obvious question about influence on Screwtape.
We have here the first really extensive comments upon Christianity by Lewis. He thinks it is pure myth. Educated people have always distanced themselves from such things (the priggish note). He is an agnostic about any thing outside the material world or life after death. He speaks of the Christian God as a bogey that wants to torture him forever if he should fail to come up to his impossible moral ideals - a spirit "more cruel and barbarous than any man". Such Christian ideas had "always considerably lessened" his happiness. (12 Oct., 18 Oct.)
He's dipping into Boswell's Johnson and loves Milton's Comus; he's increasingly devoted to Scott (p. 236).
Another student is joining them for Spanish study (6 Oct). Lewis also reveals that he's been stealing pages from that "thrice accursed felow pupil of his" to write his letters. Ha!
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
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